Dead Cells Announced for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One

Steam Early Access hit rogue-lite Dead Cells is coming to the Nintendo Switch this year, developer Motion Twin has revealed, as well as PS4 and Xbox One..

IGN can exclusively confirm Dead Cells will launch on consoles day-and-date with its 1.0 debut on PC as the game exits Early Access on Steam. The metroidvania adventure action platformer will also receive content updates on Switch alongside updates to the PC build. Check out the announcement trailer below.

Motion Twin’s post-launch updates include both patches and content additions, though the developer isn’t quite ready to discuss what specifically will be added to the game after launch.

Dead Cells’ move to Switch may be a surprise to some, but for Motion Twin it seemed like an obvious fit.

“The whole team got behind the idea of a Switch release quite early. Not only because two thirds of the team are Nintendo fans (who bought the Switch day one), but also because we easily get five to ten people asking about it every day,” Motion Twin’s Sebastien Benard and Steve Filby said in an email interview with IGN.

“We had the chance to show Dead Cells to them during the GDC 2017, and they instantly thought it would be a great fit for their system,” they explained. “The roguelite aspect of Dead Cells makes it very suitable for short sessions, which is also a unique strength of handheld systems… There’s just chemistry between the game and the Switch.”

As for taking advanyage of Switch-specific features, Benard and Filby explained some of the “cooler” ideas may wait until after launch to see what the Switch audience is most interested in.

“There is definitely room to improve the game experience through Switch specific features, for instance doing even more with the HD rumble; we could try changing the intensity of the vibration relative to the strength of an enemy’s attack, or by making the console rumble more on the right if you’ve been hit from the right hand side,” they said.

Dead Cells entered Early Access in mid-2017 and has since seen continual updates as the devs work with the community to adjust the game. Motion Twin called player input “ubiquitous” to what the devs have changed in-game during this time.